


Apologies

by prepare4trouble



Series: Little By Little [22]
Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Apologies, Awkward Conversations, Ezra Bridger Needs a Hug, Ezra Has a Bad Sense Of Humor, Ezra gets a hug, Gen, Making things right, Protective Sabine, Trying Something Again, Visually Impaired Ezra Bridger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-27
Updated: 2017-03-27
Packaged: 2018-10-11 18:11:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10471035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prepare4trouble/pseuds/prepare4trouble
Summary: Ezra and Sabine have another try at the talk that went wrong before.  It goes a little better this time.





	

Since coming aboard the Ghost, Ezra had never spent so much time alone in his room. His quarters had always been for sleeping, for the occasional argument with Zeb, and for not much else. There was very little to do there, unless for some reason he felt the need to lie on the bed and stare into space.

Which was exactly what he was doing right now.

It wasn’t like he had anything better to do. He hadn’t bothered to find out exactly what Sato had meant by ‘removed from active duty’, but he doubted he was actually barred from helping out around the base. Nobody was going to turn down help if he offered it. Still, it wasn’t like the Rebellion was going to fall apart if he didn’t go out and move some garbage, or pass tools to the rude mechanic he had tried to help a few days before. He just didn’t feel like being helpful right now, and that seemed completely justified, given the circumstances.

Anyway, he had a hunch that going outside might be a bad idea. The more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed that that kid -- the one who knew -- would have mentioned what was happening to at least a few other people at the races. He probably wouldn’t have done it maliciously; he had come up to Ezra appearing genuinely concerned, trying to help, but he hadn’t appeared to see any problem with talking about it. Even if he only mentioned it in passing to one or two people, if they all did the same, it would be everywhere by lunchtime.

Not to mention, Ezra had dropped some pretty broad hints to Hobbie and Wedge that there was something up, and he was under no illusions that they wouldn’t go seeking the information that he had told them was out there waiting to be found. Well, Hobbie would. Wedge, if Ezra remembered rightly, had been scheduled for a mission first thing that morning, so he would have to wait and do his digging when he got back.

Not that it would _exactly_ be a bad thing for them to know. Once they did, Ezra would be able to stop worrying about when and how they were going to find out. Still, just because it wasn’t bad, didn’t mean he could bring himself to see it as a _good_ thing. Plus, Hobbie might not know yet, he had to give him a little more time, or when he spoke to him he would still find himself playing that awful guessing game, just as he would when Wedge got back.

Maybe he should ask Zeb and Sabine to go out and start talking about it. That would speed things up, because nobody would question it; everybody knew _they_ wouldn’t be spreading false information.

Sabine. He felt himself wince at the thought of her name, and at the expression on her face in the split second before he had turned and fled the room; the shock and the hurt. He felt as though he had slapped her. He had overreacted, and he was going to have to fix it, somehow.

He had no idea how.

It hadn’t been _entirely_ his fault, most of — some of — the blame lay with Sato, and his stupid, unfair, _pointless_ decision to take Ezra off missions when he could still see fine. He wouldn’t put anybody in danger, and anyway, if he wasn’t allowed to go on missions, what was he supposed to do instead?

If the rest of the Ghost crew were on a mission, what was he meant to do then? Go with them on the ship but not be allowed to leave his room?! Stay behind on the base?

Yeah, probably that. Stay behind with nowhere to go, nothing to do, knowing that his family could be in danger and there might have been something he could do to help but instead, he would be stuck on the base, without even having the option of sulking in his room, because his quarters would have gone on the mission without him.

Well that was just great.

He took a deep breath and tried to release his anger and his frustration in the way that Kanan had taught him. It didn’t _really_ work. Same as it didn’t really work with any of the negative emotions he had been struggling with recently. He tried again, taking a deep breath and releasing a fraction of the anger. The rest refused to budge. Some things, he supposed, just had to be felt. It made you do something about it.

Like now, for example. Sabine. He couldn't leave it like that for any longer than he had to. He should have done something already, and every minute he lay there stewing made him feel worse. He didn’t imagine she was thrilled with him either right now.

Maybe he would get a pass because of his eyes.

He really hoped not.

He took a deep breath and forced out a frustrated sigh, angry as much with himself as the situation, and then rolled to the edge of the bed and dropped down to the ground with a muted clang of feet on metallic floor. It was time. The longer he left it, the harder it was going to be, and it was going to be hard enough already. Anyway, he was getting sick of looking at the walls of his room, and it didn’t seem right, right now, to feel that way about looking at _anything_.

* * *

Ezra opened the door to his quarters to find himself looking at Sabine’s door opposite. It was closed. That wasn’t unusual of course, but for her it was less usual than for him. He would often walk past to find it open, the surrounding area filled with the smell of paint as she worked on some new piece or another. He had never worked out why that was; whether it was a practical decision, to allow the fumes to escape, and be collected by the air filtration system in the rest of the ship rather than relying on the one in her quarters to deal with it alone; or whether she simply wanted people to see her making her art as much as she wanted them to enjoy the finished product.

There was a thing there somewhere, buried inside that thought, that he had been very carefully avoiding thinking about.

He squashed down the half-formed thought, filed it under ‘deal with it later’ and instead, raised a hand to press the door chime. He hesitated there, index finger hovering an inch from the button. He had no idea what he was supposed to say. Or, for that matter, whether Sabine was even in her quarters. She had been earlier, but she could have left. He hadn’t heard her go, but he hadn’t exactly been paying attention, lost in his own thoughts as he had been.

He sniffed the air, then moved his head a little closer to the door, turning his ear to the surface, listening for the telltale hiss of a paint can. Nothing. He pulled back, and very quickly looked all around him, making sure that he hadn’t been caught in _that_ embarrassing act by anybody. Particularly anybody short, metallic, and Chopper-shaped.

He could try reaching out through the Force, using it to get an idea of what was happening on the other side of the door, but that felt too intrusive. Not to mention potentially embarrassing. What if it was something he didn’t want to know?

He turned to leave, hesitated, turned back, and before he allowed himself time to think about it, jabbed at the chime with one hand. He backed away a step, and waited. Maybe she wouldn’t be there…

“Uh… wait a minute…” Sabine called from inside the room. He heard the rustling sound of sheets of flimsi, and a muted bang sound not unlike a heavy book being closed. “Okay, come in.”

He opened the door at the exact moment that Sabine launched herself from her bunk onto the floor of her cabin and stood there, blinking as though someone were shining a bright light in her eyes. She blinked a few more times, then looked at him. “Ezra,” she said, a little warily.

Ezra smiled sheepishly. “Yesterday,” he said. “I, uh…” he hesitated. That wasn’t the right way to start anything. “Hi,” he said.

Sabine folded her arms. He tried not to squint at her, so he couldn’t be sure, but he thought she was frowning. “Hi,” she repeated.

He glanced around the room, searching for any new paintings on the wall, but he didn’t see anything that he didn’t recognize. On the bed, there lay a large binder of some description; it appeared to contain sheets of flimsi, quite a few sheets. Some kind of sketch pad or something, maybe.

“Can I help you?” Sabine asked him. As she noticed the direction of his gaze, she sidestepped, putting herself between him and the folder.

How to say what he needed to tell her? Ezra took a deep breath, and focussed all of his attention on her. He took a step forward, allowing her face to come into better focus. “I’m sorry,” he blurted. “For yesterday, for getting angry. I didn’t mean…” he stopped, because he had meant it. He had meant every word. What he hadn’t meant was to say it out loud. “Sorry,” he repeated.

He looked back at Sabine. He hadn’t realized until that moment that he had looked away as he had spoken, angling his gaze to the ground.

“Yeah, me too,” she muttered.

“It’s Sato’s fault,” Ezra told her. “I mean, not really, but…” half the things he had said to Sabine had been meant for the commander, things that he would never dare to say. “When he told me I was grounded, I just…” he stopped at the expression on her face. She hadn’t known.

Sabine shook her head. “He what?”

He didn’t bother to repeat it. She had heard him fine.

“But you… we…” she was still shaking her head. She folded her arms a little lighter. “Is it… it’s not that bad already?”

Again, he didn’t reply. How could he explain a thing like that; exactly how much he could or couldn’t see? It wasn’t like he could show her. Or Sato, for that matter. _That_ would have made things a lot easier.

Well, either that, or a lot worse, because he had a sneaking, unvoiced suspicion that actually, things might have slowly gotten a whole lot worse than he realized. Not bad enough that grounding him was the right move, but maybe enough that seeing through his eyes might shock people.

And that was another thing he wasn’t going to think about just yet.

He heard a sharp intake of breath from Sabine. She had taken his silence as confirmation. “No!” he said quickly. “No, it’s not that bad, it’s… He’s wrong.”

“Okay.” Sabine leaned heavily against the bunk, looking shaken. Apparently his attempt at damage control had failed. It wasn’t just going to be her; when this got out, _everybody_ would be thinking the same thing.

“Hera’s going to try and fix it,” he said. She was going to have to do it soon, or it wouldn't matter. Nobody was going to trust him on a mission if they all thought he wasn’t capable. He backed off a step. “Anyway, I just wanted to say sorry, so… yeah.” He turned to leave, reached out and touched the door release.

He could feel her gaze on him, the sensation of eyes watching him, her desire to say something else and her frustration at being unable to find the words. Or maybe that was himself, projected onto her. Connections through the Force could tell him a lot, but not that much.

He turned back to find her looking at him, just as he had sensed. She turned her gaze to the floor the moment they locked eyes.

He had to say something else. The apology had done nothing to help, and if he didn’t fix this, things were never going to be normal again. The only way he could think of to fix it, was to go back in time and do it better. Unfortunately, that was impossible.

Or was it?

He took a deep breath. This was going to sound ridiculous, but he didn't care. “Look, can we start over?” he asked. “The whole thing; yesterday, today, can we just… do it again?”

She frowned, curious. “What do you mean?”

“Just…” he didn’t really know. “What happened yesterday, can it just… not have happened? Can we try it again?”

She still seemed confused. That wasn’t surprising; what he was asking was technically impossible. “Life doesn’t really work that way, Ezra,” she said uncertainly.

“Sure it does. Like this,” he told her. He smiled and leaned, as casually as he could, against the wall. “Hey, Sabine, how’s it going?” he said.

She stared at him for several moments, seeming to assess her options, then shrugged. “Okay, I guess,” she replied. “You?”

He fidgeted with his jacket, shuffled his feet and very deliberately didn’t look at her as he spoke. “Not so great, actually. So, it turns out going blind isn’t as much fun as you might think. I…”

Her arms wrapped around him unexpectedly, catching him off-guard; the force and suddenness of the embrace almost knocking him off balance. She held him tightly, pulling him closer, gripping harder that he had even realised she was able, like she didn’t ever want to let go. It took Ezra a moment to recover from the surprise, but when he did, he returned the hug, maybe a little less forcefully.

“I think it’s going to be okay though,” he continued, when he could breathe again. “You know, eventually. But I just… I just need you all to…” He shook his head. “Just, don’t treat me any different, okay?”

He felt her nodding against his shoulder. “I’m sorry for that,” she told him.

She had no reason to apologize. She had been trying to help, and he had never really been angry with her, it had always been Sato, and the situation as a whole. Sabine had taken the brunt of it because she had happened to be there at the wrong time. “Don’t be,” he told her. “You were fine, it was just everything else.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I know. I’m still sorry.” He allowed his hands to drop to his sides, releasing her from the hug. Sabine held on for a few seconds longer before she squeezed him quickly, tightly, then let him go. “So what are you doing now?”

He frowned. “Standing here having another awkward conversation,” he said. “But this isn’t as bad as Zeb last night, so there’s that at least. Other than that? Not much.”

“Okay then.” She stepped around him and opened the door. “C’mon, there’s got to be something that needs doing around here, let’s go find it.”

Ezra hesitated. Going out right now still didn’t feel like a good idea.

Appearing to sense his reluctance, Sabine turned back. She looked at him critically, as though trying to figure out the answer to a riddle, then smiled. “Don’t worry,” she told him, “if anyone dares say anything, they’ll have to answer to me.” She hesitated herself. “And that’s not treating you differently, by the way. It’s always been that way, for you or any other member of the crew.”

He grinned. He had known that already; it had never even occurred to him to think anything else.

**Author's Note:**

> ♥ Comments are loved ♥


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